


harness your memories

by Deisderium



Series: tits out, lads [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: A Mere Frisson of Angst, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Fluff, Frottage, Identity Issues, M/M, Museums, Oh They're Getting Hugs All Right, Sharing a Bed, Smut, Sort Of, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, shield harness, tiddy - Freeform, very soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-20 09:22:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18989833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deisderium/pseuds/Deisderium
Summary: "Who am I?" he asks the target. He didn't consciously decide to lower the knife, but his hand is at his side and he has straightened out of a fighting crouch."You're James Buchanan Barnes," the target says. "Bucky. You're my best friend."The Asset stares at him. This feels more right than anything he's heard in...he can't remember how long. He doesn't know.*In which the Asset sees Steve Rogers' chest and starts to remember things.





	harness your memories

 

This mission isn't right.

The Asset doesn't know what, exactly, it is about the target—Steven Grant Rogers, codename Captain America—that has him pulling his aim. He's had the opportunity for a head shot three times at least since they both got on this helicarrier, and yet he keeps jerking his hand down or to the side, and the most the target has acquired is a graze along his thigh.

Does he know him? Something inside him feels like he does, but that's impossible. He's not allowed to know things, outside of the mechanics of killing. But still...there's something about this man: the bulk of his body, which the Asset shouldn’t notice outside of where best to aim for the center mass; the blue of his eyes. The Asset knows that the hair beneath the helmet is blond.

The Asset does not know how he knows that.

The Asset draws a knife. He can't seem to shoot the target, but surely he can stab him. He's good at knives. 

The Asset rushes the target, knife drawn, and the target gets his shield up, and when the Asset swings with his left arm, the metal arm, the fist, the target blocks it with the shield and the reverberations sink into nothing. Vibranium. This falls into place, tugging at a memory the Asset shouldn’t have. He...expected that. He _knew_ it. He is not supposed to know things.

Frustration gives him extra savagery, and the next time he punches with the left hand, he's ready with the knife in his right, and while the target is focused on blocking the punch, he slices down from his shoulder.

The target gives a hoarse yell and dances back, but the knife is still hooked into his uniform, and as he retreats, it rips through the kevlar and canvas until a large tear exposes a compression shirt and a glimpse of the pale skin beneath.

The Asset staggers back as though he too has been stabbed. This is—there's something about the ripped uniform, the skin peeking out—

The target is bleeding, and the Asset's gut twists at the thought that he was the one to hurt the target. Which doesn't make _sense_ ; he is a weapon, and weapons don't regret. Weapons shoot where they are pointed.

"Bucky?" the target says. Despite the blood running down from his shoulder, he sounds hopeful.

The Asset can't look away from those few exposed inches of pectoral muscle. This is a tactical advantage he should press—this is a target—but instead all he can think is that he should bandage up the wound, then rip the tear in the fabric wider and get his hands on the target. His mouth.

He's feeling something he has no way of interpreting, a warmth in his chest and gut. It isn't hunger, and it isn't the adrenaline of the fight, though it has elements in common with both. He wants so many things all of a sudden that are not mission-compliant. He wants to lie down somewhere soft and...have the target lie on top of him? In this scenario, they are not fighting. In this scenario, the target is cupping his face in one giant hand.

He looks up, and the target is watching him. Without breaking eye contact, the target unbuckles his helmet and pulls it off. His hair beneath it is indeed blond, and something inside the Asset uncurls, because he knew it; he was right.

How many other things that he is not supposed to know are lurking somewhere inside him? What else could he find inside himself, without handlers and techs to burn it out of him?

"I have to do this, Buck," the target says, fingers clenched around something, "or a lot of people are going to die." The way he says it makes clear that he expects the Asset to be bothered by this, and it lights up another connection in his brain. He has never liked excessive collateral damage, when he was able to choose otherwise. He knew the target's hair was blond and that was true. Does the target know other things about him, things that he doesn't know, that are true?

"Who am I?" he asks the target. He didn't consciously decide to lower the knife, but his hand is at his side and he has straightened out of a fighting crouch.

"You're James Buchanan Barnes," the target says. "Bucky. You're my best friend."

The Asset stares at him. This feels more right than anything he's heard in...he can't remember how long. He doesn't know.

Then the Asset makes a decision—the first outside of how to carry out a mission that he recalls—and steps aside. "Do whatever you have to do."

The target gives him a look that is so hopeful that the Asset wants to tell him to hide that, never let anyone see, catalog all the ways it could be used against him. Then the target _turns his back on him_ like a complete fucking walnut, and the Asset wants to scream at his carelessness, yell at him for coming home with his knuckles busted up and a shiner coming up purple around his eye, and—

The Asset gasps as a memory settles into place: this man, but smaller. The Asset had cleaned his knuckles, careful, because the last thing he wanted was to hurt Steve any more.

And Steve—the target—was right to turn his back; he's doing whatever it is with the computer at the center of this flying monstrosity, and the Asset hasn't attacked his unprotected back. The Asset is too busy trying to figure out what the fuck is happening in his head, and how to keep it happening. He's not going back to his handlers, that's for sure.

"Ninety seconds, Cap," a woman says over Steve's comm unit, loud enough that the Asset can hear it over the mechanical sounds of the vehicle.

"Charlie lock," Steve says.

"Good," the woman says. "Get the fuck out of there."

"Yeah." Steve turns around, looks at the Asset. Something goes soft and gooey in his expression. The Asset desperately wishes to see more of this expression, even while he also wants to claw off all of his skin at the suggestion that this man is seeing him, really seeing some person behind the proficient weapon. A person who, perhaps, did not choose to be a murderer. "We'll get out."

"We?" the woman says. "Steve, who the fuck—" 

But Steve reaches up and turns off the comm. The Asset walks to him and gives in to the compulsion that's been haunting him since he put a knife in the target's shoulder. He reaches out and touches the exposed skin with his ungloved right hand, careful not to hurt him any more than he already has.

Steve breathes in sharply, watching the Asset with wide eyes. His skin is warm and soft and smooth, the hairs a crinklier texture. It feels... familiar. A memory held in his fingertips instead of in his brain. Good; his brain is not a safe place for memories.

The Asset is not that conversant with accepted modes of human interaction, but he's pretty sure groping another person like he's doing is overstepping. He makes himself let go of Steve and take a few steps back, hands raised in silent apology. But from the way Steve is looking at him, he's pretty sure Steve didn't mind.

"Bucky, we've gotta get out of here." The floor shudders beneath them, and it quickly becomes apparent that the helicarrier they are standing on is now in the process of exploding. Neat.

"What's your exit strategy?" the Asset says.

Steve makes a face that the Asset can somehow instantly translate as meaning he has no exit strategy, or perhaps, he thinks a little more guiltily, that the Asset had torn a wing off his exit strategy before kicking him off the helicarrier. Steve opens his mouth to say something, but before he can talk, a girder swings loose and knocks him down, pinning him in place.

The Asset is not in the habit of panicking when things go tits up on a mission, so he can't really explain why his insides are fizzing with adrenaline as he vaults over the girder to get to Steve.

Steve is unconscious but breathing, his cheekbone purpling, the girder heavy across his ribs. The wind has picked up as the helicarrier tilts, falling, and fire is roaring all around him, but the Asset leans in close and listens, and there is no gurgling or crackling as he takes in breath. He may well have broken ribs, but he doesn't have a punctured lung. The Asset lifts the girder, bracing it on his shoulders so he can pull Steve out.

The helicarrier shakes again, the angle of the floor shifting steeper. He hefts Steve into a bridal carry and manages to get them to the edge of the helicarrier. The Potomac is a wide, muddy streak beneath them, sunlight glittering off the water. He's survived worse, and Steve is enhanced too. Also, the alternative is just sticking around to get blown up along with the helicarrier, and he can't let that happen. Not now that he's just found Steve.

He jumps.

Hitting the water feels like a full-body slap, and then it is cold and unpleasant and murky. He managed to angle himself so that he took the brunt of the impact, but it still slammed his body against Steve's in a way that might have exacerbated Steve's injuries. He loops his metal arm around Steve's chest and swims for shore. They are both heavy, and he can feel the effort expended in the burn of his muscles, the panting expansion of his lungs as he tries to get enough air.

As he pulls Steve onto the riverbank, he hears sirens in the distance, and he frowns. He wants to stay with Steve, but the fulfillment of that desire will be short-lived if he is apprehended. He allows himself to wallow in indecision for ten long seconds, then takes the comm from Steve's ear and activates it.

"Hello," he says, not sure that anyone will be on the other end of the line, but seconds later, the same woman who spoke before answers him.

"Cap? God damn it—"

"Steven Grant Rogers is injured," he tells her. "Unconscious. Possible concussion, possible broken ribs. Knife wound to the left shoulder."

"Who is this?" she demands.

"Medical attention is necessary. He's beside the river." He names a few landmarks that will help her find Steve, and then leaves the comm unit on Steve's chest, her voice still asking questions. He bites his lip, then places his hand on Steve's exposed skin one more time before he walks away. 

*

The Asset needs more intel.

Some of it is easily obtained. He is not without resources, gathered from various abandoned Hydra safehouses, so once he has cleaned himself of the river water to the best of his ability and changed into civilian clothes, he purchases a burner phone and spends a productive half-hour googling Steven Grant Rogers. There's a lot available online, but all of it is so clinical and detached. How is it supposed to help him?

Some of it—especially the photographs—gives him a strange feeling, like he is looking at them through water, like there is something more to be seen, if only he could get his eyes wide enough. But it's not what he needs.

There is a glut of news articles about the Insight disaster, but the reports are conflicting at this early stage, though at least one of the more recent ones says that Captain America is hospitalized in stable condition. Something tight in the Asset's chest uncurls after that.

He flicks through the screens, pauses on an article about an exhibition at the Smithsonian. This seems promising, and he has no immediate plans until Steve is released from the hospital.

The exhibit is better than the pictures on his phone. He reads the information stenciled on the walls, looks at the life-size photographs. There's a picture of Steve small, and he has to stop for a moment as more fragments fall into his mind with no rhyme or reason. More of this version of Steve with a cut lip, a bruised face, but also the memory of slinging his hand over his shoulder, tugging him closer, is something he feels more than remembers any individual moment.

Below that picture is one of him big, the Steve he's seen now, the Steve that he's touched. In this picture, Steve is shirtless, the vast expanse of his pectoral muscles captured in black and white, the look on his face one of...determination, the Asset decides, or maybe confusion.

The picture draws his eye. He has seen Steve shirtless before, up close, has touched him. He knows without remembering. He wishes he could remember.

A child is watching him stand and stare. He moves on, past flickering black-and-white footage of soldiers, of Steve running in that uniform. He comes to a stop in front of a row of mannequins dressed in uniforms, enormous paintings of men’s faces on the wall behind them, and his heart does something complicated and arrhythmical.

One of the faces is his own.

The others—he knows them. Not just Steve. But all of them send a cascade of bubbles floating up through the murky water of his memories. The uniforms are all dark colors, good for skulking, he thinks approvingly, except Steve's, which is red, white, and blue, with a giant star right in the middle of the chest. Bad for skulking. Good for...

Good for emphasizing the breadth of Steve's shoulders, the span of his chest, his narrow waist. Good for the Asset—no, not the Asset. Before the Asset. Good for _Bucky_ to put his hands on, to try and map the change between one Steve and the next. _You're keeping the uniform, right?_ echoes through his head, the faint burn of alcohol on his tongue.

He walks on, more slowly, and is confronted again by his own face, a pixelated picture blown up on glass, with a brief biography next to it. It doesn't tell him much. "In an ironic twist of fate, his prison camp was liberated by his childhood friend, Steve Rogers, now Captain America," makes him snort, suddenly certain that this was no twist of fate, ironic or not, but sheer stubbornness on Steve's part.

Then another black and white film plays but it's Steve and himself this time, which is—look, it's weird, because it's him, but he doesn't remember it, and the two of them are laughing, and he has never in his memory felt a smile that wide stretch his own face, and he hasn't seen Steve smile like that either—yet—but he wants to. He watched the silent video loop through three times, wishing for it to spark a memory, but it doesn't, and neither does anything else in the exhibit, though he does get more information about Steve from it.

It's clear that for the kind of intelligence he wants, he needs to go to the source.

*

Steve's apartment is surrounded by other buildings. This is convenient for someone who might want to surveil him through a scope while figuring out how best to approach him. Not that the Asset thinks Steve is going to turn him away, based on that blindingly hopeful look he'd given him, but still. He has tried to identify the source of the fizzy feeling surging along his nerve endings, making his stomach feel like an entire conservatory full of butterflies, and he thinks it's nervousness.

Steve had said he was his best friend, and the Smithsonian exhibit seems to verify it, but the operative tense is past. He _was_ his friend. He is not the same person now. The collection of partial memories hardly adds up to a friend, much less a best one. Maybe watching Steve will jog something—anything—loose.

The first day of surveillance is dull. Steve comes back home—good—and settles in. He shuffles around, moving slowly enough that the Asset can't tell if he's injured or just tired.

The Asset chews his lip for close to two minutes, which is not that long, objectively, but long enough to draw blood.

Fuck it. This is bad operational security, but this isn't an op like any other.

The Asset watches the warm yellow light from Steve's kitchen as the sun goes down, then launches himself from the roof of one building to the fire escape of the next, angling his body to disperse most of the kinetic force. He clings for a few seconds, then drops down to the level below: Steve's floor.

The room inside is not elegantly furnished: couch, overstuffed chair, television on a wall. Coffee table, a few side tables. Lamps, a rug. Nicer than they used to have, he suddenly thinks, and can picture a tiny cold water flat the two of them lived in. It's so much more staggering than anything in the museum was, and he wants to gather it to his chest to keep it safe.

He wants to go inside. 

But he doesn't. He stays frozen, indecisive, looking in through the window. He can hear Steve moving around inside, in a room he can't see. The kitchen, maybe. Water runs, then turns off.

Steve walks into the room, holding a glass, and goes perfectly still when he sees the Asset. He sets the water down on the coffee table and comes to the window, slides it open.

"Bucky," he says, and he's wrong, but the Asset wishes so much that he could be that person for him.

Steve is wearing jeans and a blue t-shirt that strains to cross his chest and appears to have been painted over his biceps. The Asset is abruptly sick with the thought that he stabbed him, that he hurt him.

"Are your ribs okay?" he says, and is surprised at the roughness of his own voice.

"Yeah, Buck, I'm fine," Steve says. "Are you—"

"What about the stab wound?" He reaches out for Steve, abortively, but Steve sees the movement and pulls his shirt up. The Asset's mouth goes dry as he takes in the swell of Steve's chest, hairier than the picture at the Smithsonian, but no smaller, and so much more to take in as it moves with his breaths. The knife wound is a mere pink line, almost healed. The thought of it marking that unblemished skin twists in the Asset's gut, and he tries to hide his distress, but isn't sure how successful he is; he’s not good at hiding his emotions, only practiced in not being allowed them.

"See?" Steve's face is soft, open. "It's not even going to leave a scar."

He wants to lay his hand over that healing mark, but Steve is already pulling his shirt back down, so the Asset just says, "I'm not who you think I am." Steve makes a noise of protest, but the Asset keeps going. "There's so much I don't remember. That person you knew—I'm not the same as him."

Steve's jaw comes up in a way that you don't have to have the full memories of James Buchanan Barnes to know means he's going to be a stubborn cuss. "Doesn't matter to me. However much or little you remember, I want to know you." He hesitates, draws in a breath. "I want you to stay."

A shudder rolls through the Asset. "What does that mean? Do you have to turn me in?"

"No! No, I'm not going to turn you in, Jesus. You're not—you're not dangerous right now."

"As long as Hydra doesn't get to me."

Steve's face screws up into a scowl. "Not gonna happen."

The Asset can't help the smile that he feels creasing his face at that. "Big talk, pal."

Steve’s expression goes open and melty again at that. "You coming in?"

The Asset hesitates. He shouldn't. But he wanted intel and Steve is the best source of information and—when it comes down to it, he just wants to be around him. It feels...good.

"Yeah, all right." He climbs in through the window, and tries to pretend it's casual.

Steve is looking at him with an expression that says he is trying not to spook the Asset but he clearly wants something.

"What?" the Asset says.

"It's just—can I hug you? Not if you don't want to, I just—I've been wishing I could touch you again for years." Steve bites his lip and looks at the Asset through his lashes. "I don't know if you remember, but there was a time you had to touch me to be sure I was real, and I think I get it now more than I ever did before."

The Asset can't think of a single thing to say to that, so he just spreads his arms wide. Steve moves forward and wraps his arms around the Asset, pulling him close, fingers digging in to the meat of his back. After a second, the Asset clings to him just as fiercely, ducking his head to press his nose into Steve's shoulder, breathing in the scent of his detergent and shampoo, and beneath it, the scent of his skin, which, like so much of Steve, is comforting and known in a way he can't explain. 

"Please," Steve says against his skin. "Don't leave. Please stay with me."

"Okay," the Asset says.

And he does.

*

It is difficult to stay with Steve.

The Asset doesn't want it to be difficult. The Asset wishes he could be the Bucky Steve remembers. The Asset wishes he knew how to be around other people more easily, that he was better at human interaction. Because not only does he not know what Steve wants, he doesn't know what _he_ wants.

It's frustrating.

Steve tries to help. _Of course, he does_ , the Asset thinks, then wants to kick his own ass, because he doesn't know why he thought that. For the first three days, they are constantly dancing around each other. Steve, the Asset thinks, is trying not to scare him off. For his own part, he doesn't know how to deal with any of the emotions written all over Steve's face. Steve wants so much and the Asset has so little context about how to provide it.

Plus, he can't sleep. He's too on edge, listening for every one of Steve's movements, and Steve can't sleep, possibly for the same reason, and the two of them are twitchy, hypersensitive messes by day four, when the Asset wakes out of a fitful doze, brushes his teeth, and walks into the living room to see Steve asleep on the couch, head tilted back, a faint snore coming out of his mouth.

Fondness breaks over the Asset like a wave hitting the beach, and he doesn't question his impulse for once, just walks over to the couch and curls up next to Steve, moving Steve's arm over his own shoulders and burrowing into his side. Steve doesn't even wake up, just says "hmmmgh," and pulls him tight so their bodies are flush and warm against each other. The Asset's head rests on Steve's chest, moving slightly with his breaths, Steve's heartbeat a comforting metronome, slow and steadfast. He is objectively a less comfortable pillow than the one on the bed the Asset just left, but subjectively...

The Asset is asleep in under three minutes, and it's the best rest he's had since he woke up to this new life.

He wakes up when Steve moves under him; that broad chest heaves up, down, the arm around the Asset's shoulders moves away, then tightens, pulling him even closer to Steve's body. The Asset makes a sleepy sound, and Steve freezes.

"Bucky?" he says.

"Any other former assassins falling asleep on you around here?" the Asset manages to get out, not opening his eyes or moving from Steve's chest.

Said chest moves under him with Steve's laugh, and he feels lips press against his hair, and then fingers slowly moving through it, teasing out the tangles, and he goes even more boneless than he already is.

"Is this all right?" Steve murmurs.

"Yeah," the Asset says. "Better than all right."

Steve fingers keep moving through his hair and there's something about it, something familiar, both about Steve petting him like a cat, and how much he likes it.

"Have we done this before?" the Asset asks.

Steve's fingers pause for a brief second before moving again. "Yeah. I mean, your hair was never this long before, but sometimes you'd let me wash it for you. And sometimes when we had a chance to be alone, I did this for you. You always..." He pauses, then finishes, "you always liked it." The Asset wonders if he changed what he was about to say, and finds that he doesn't like the idea of Steve self-editing in front of him.

"I like it now," he says, and a memory comes loose inside of him, untangling like his hair, drawn out by Steve's fingers. A bathtub big enough for two of them. The smell of rosemary. Steve's hands in his hair, on his chest. Steve's large body over his on a bed. "A weekend in a house in England," he says, and Steve makes a choking sound halfway between surprise and a sob.

"You remember that?"

The Asset rolls over so he can see Steve's face, eyes wide and wet, not crying, tears pooling on his eyelids. The Asset reaches up, cups his right hand to Steve's cheek. "Some of it, just now. We were..." He stops, doesn't know how to say what he felt, in that memory; what he has felt all along without knowing it.

"You had just told me that you loved me a few days before that," Steve says, his voice rough, "and I had always loved you." 

The Asset has done better following his body's impulses than overthinking things, with Steve, anyway, so does what his body wants and leans up to press his lips gently against Steve's, not caring that he really needs to brush his teeth, certain that Steve won't care either. Steve wraps his arms around him, and the two of them lean into each other.

"I missed you so much," Steve says against his mouth, and the Asset thinks that even without remembering, he must have missed him too.

*

The Asset comes to some conclusions after that first night slumped against each other. Touching Steve is helpful to both of them. First, they both like it, and second, it seems to be very beneficial to Steve's mental state, and third, the more the Asset touches him, the more he remembers, as though his memories are stored in Steve's skin.

He decides, after he kisses Steve, and they stand up to go brush their teeth and make coffee, that on reflection, the Asset is a designation for a thing, not a name for a person, and while he still doesn't think that he is the Bucky that Steve remembers, not exactly, he isn't _not_ that person, either, and if he's going to have a name, he wants it to be the one that Steve calls him.

The next few weeks are spent in quiet domesticity, the two of them learning how to be with each other. Bucky doesn't kiss Steve on the mouth again, not yet, but he touches him often, remembering bits and pieces of their shared past sometimes; just enjoying how Steve feels whether it sparks a memory or not.

The first night after they slept on the couch, he had gotten into bed in Steve's guest room, lain awake, staring at the ceiling for half an hour before thinking to himself: _fuck it,_ and walking across the hall. He knocked on the door to Steve's room, softly in case he was asleep; but Steve said, "Yeah?" immediately, and Bucky was pretty sure he'd been lying awake too.

Bucky came to the side of the bed, and Steve propped himself up on his elbows. Bucky was for some reason acutely aware that they were both wearing Steve's t-shirts, and Bucky had on a pair of Steve's sweatpants. "I can't sleep," Bucky said. "Do you mind if I...?"

And Steve had swept the covers back, invited him in, and Bucky had curled up next to him, and since that night, he hasn't slept without the warmth of Steve's body seeping into him. 

And he thinks that once again his body is smarter than his mind, because once he sleeps next to Steve, it's easier to touch him in the daytime too, and sometimes things will come back to him. Not always good things; sometimes it's the feel of his eye pressed to a scope, calculating angles and windspeed, or what his knife handle feels like stuck to his flesh hand with blood, what it feels like to have surgery without anesthesia, and then he has to sit by himself and shake, or get to the toilet to throw up.

But mostly he remembers times with Steve; sitting on the fire escape in 1939, smoking a cigarette around the corner of the building to keep the smoke from blowing at Steve; following him into battle; holding still so Steve could draw him under the window that got the best light in their flat, complaining about it endlessly but actually pleased.

"Do you still draw?" he asks Steve on the heels of that memory.

Steve has been flipping through Netflix looking for something to watch. This has turned into an evening habit; Steve has a list of movies people have recommended him, and they both like documentaries about space. They will start watching something and end up leaning against each other, or with someone's feet on the other's lap, a big warm hand hooked around his ankle, or Steve will have one arm across the back of the couch like it's casual, and Bucky will slide over and burrow into his side, and Steve's arm will pull tight around his shoulder, and it shouldn't be so easy and right, but it is.

"Not in a while," Steve says, surprised. The smile that sweeps over his face is wide and genuine and brings creases to the corners of his eyes. "You just remember that?"

"I remembered you drawing me."

"My favorite subject."

The look on Steve's face is so pleased, Bucky doesn't even think before he says, "You could draw me again if you wanted to."

"Yeah? I'd like that." Steve's still smiling, not a bit less happy, but also his face is turning kind of red.

"What?" Bucky says suspiciously.

"Nothing, Buck," Steve lies, then bites his lower lip. "Just remembering some of the times you modeled for me."

Bucky wishes very much that he could remember whatever has turned Steve such a brilliant shade of tomato. Perhaps more touching will knock something else loose. He doesn't bother waiting for Steve to pick a movie, just scoots across the couch and lays his head on Steve's chest. Steve makes a happy sound that Bucky feels more than hears, and keeps flipping through the menu.

*

Everything is going well, so much better than Bucky could have expected, until Steve is called away on a mission.

Bucky hadn't thought about it, but of course Steve is still Captain America, still has work to do with the other Avengers. Now that he thinks about it, he's surprised that Steve hasn't been called up before now, and says so.

"Yeah, well, they called, but it wasn't anything they couldn't handle without me until now," Steve says from the bedroom, where he's suiting up. Bucky goes in without thinking to say something about how Steve doesn't have to not go on missions on his account, but the words slip away like water from a spilled glass, because Steve...

Steve is shirtless.

Except.

Except for the shield harness.

The brown leather curves over his shoulders, framing the swell of his pecs. His skin is smooth over the vast range of muscle, and, Bucky is pleased to note with some small part of his mind, unscarred where the Asset stabbed him. Bronze hair follows the curve of his musculature away from his sternum, towards his nipples, erect from the cool air, maybe.

Bucky wants to put his hands all over Steve, gets flashes of memories of times he has done exactly that. He’s remembered bits and pieces of it before, moments of skin on skin, knew that when Steve had said he was his best friend that was shorthand for everything else that they were, but until this moment, he hasn't remembered—or felt—physical desire.

Now he feels it. Now he wants.

He looks up to Steve's face, and Steve is watching him, eyes wide, pupils dark. His breath is coming a little faster. "Bucky—" he says.

"I know you gotta go," Bucky says. "But we're going to talk about this when you get back."

Steve crosses the distance between them and cups Bucky's face between his hands, staring into his eyes. Bucky reaches up and grips the leather straps and tugs Steve closer, a little harder than he means to, and Steve lets out a sound that's half-moan, half-laugh, and Bucky kisses him.

When they kissed before, it was gentle, chaste. This is neither of those things. This is fast and hard and teeth and tongues, and both of them are panting when they break apart. 

Steve throws on civilian clothes over the harness, and then claps the shield to his back, where the magnets in the harness keep it in place. It should look weird, and maybe it does, but Bucky doesn't care. All he can think about is how much he wants to peel all those layers off of Steve again.

"When I get back," Steve says, voice low.

"Yeah," Bucky agrees, and grabs Steve to kiss one more time before he leaves.

*

Steve is gone for nine days. They are the longest nine days that Bucky can remember, which is not saying all that much since his continuous memory only goes back about six weeks.

They are also the hardest days of his memory, in more ways than one. He's gotten used to having Steve around, to touching him. It's boring and he has far too much time to think without him. He replays the bad memories, writes down what he remembers, trying to come up with a timeline of all the horrors he's committed, until he decides this is a good way to make himself absolutely miserable and give himself nightmares.

Also, he's gotten used to curling up against Steve at night and the bed is too big and too cold and too empty without him. It's irritating.

But hardest of all is the fact that his body has gotten one small taste of desire and decided to flood him with it. He wakes up erect after dreaming of Steve, and, well, it's not that tough to figure out what to do after that, and he had forgotten—of course he had forgotten; it had been burned out of him—that his body could feel that good. And then it's harder to not think about how this might feel pressed up against Steve, and he remembers bits and pieces, but he doesn't have a whole entire memory that gets from how he or Steve ever started anything through to the climax (and, he hopes, maybe some cuddling afterwards, but at least he's confident that they have a handle on that much.)

This seems unfair. All the intel he needs to plan out the mission is stored in a folder he can't access. So by the time Steve gets back, Bucky is both more than ready for his return and a little apprehensive at the same time.  

He goes out; he buys groceries; he spends some time sitting on the bench in the park with his eyes closed under a pair of sunglasses, head tipped back, letting the sun beat down on his face. Maybe it's a stupid risk, maybe someone could see him, but it feels so good, he almost doesn't care except for the thought of what it would do to Steve to come back and find him missing. 

Steve texts Bucky to let him know he's okay and on his way home once the mission is over, and Bucky has about six hours to vibrate out of his skin between that message and Steve's actual arrival. He tries to read, tries to watch a documentary, but can't immerse himself in either. He tries to half-heartedly jerk himself off, but the knowledge that Real Steve will be there soon makes it unsatisfying. Finally, he ends up cleaning an apartment that he hasn't really done that much to mess up and then sitting on the couch with his heel tapping out an inadvertent beat. 

When he hears the key in the door, he's on his feet immediately, aware that he’s wearing Steve’s clothes, aware that Steve might be hurt, that whatever balance they've achieved might be altered now that Steve has left and come back.

The door swings open, and Steve is framed in the doorway, and for a second they just stare at each other. Steve's wearing civilian clothes, and he's got the shield in a carrying case so it isn't quite as obvious, though Bucky would never mistake it for anything other than what it is. Steve looks good—tired, but no visible injuries. Then Steve says, "Hey, Buck," and drops the shield with a clunk, steps in and closes the door behind him.

Bucky walks over to him and pulls him close like he's been wanting to the past nine days, wraps his arms around him. He flattens his hands in the small of Steve's back and just leans on him, soaking in his warmth, the physical solidity of his body pressed against Steve's. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," Steve says into his neck. "I missed you."

"Yeah," Bucky says, "I missed you too." He can't really get any closer to Steve but he squeezes him tighter anyway, running his hands up his back, to his shoulders, and then—

His brain shorts out for a second, because beneath the fabric is a leather strap, and does he have the shield harness on under his shirt again?

Bucky pulls back, just enough that he can look at Steve with a question in his eyes. Was Steve really that worried about being attacked between Midtown and Brooklyn?

Steve's face goes red, but he looks Bucky in the eye and says, "You, uh, you seemed to really like it, so I wore it."

And that lights a spark inside Bucky, all the thoughts and dreams of the last week and half roaring to life inside him, but better, because Steve is here now. Bucky wraps his fingers around the leather as best he can through Steve's shirt, and tugs him closer so he can get his mouth on Steve's, kissing him lightly. Then Steve groans, and they're kissing like they're on fire, tongues in each other’s mouths like just before Steve left, Bucky's hands tight around Steve's narrow waist.

He pulls Steve's shirt up. He wants to see the harness, the leather supple against Steve's soft skin, that Steve wore for him, because he looked like he liked it. Steve bends forward, arms up in his haste to accommodate Bucky. Bucky tosses his shirt to the side somewhere and runs his hands down Steve's sides, trying to slow down when all he wants to do is immolate himself on the flames of his want. The harness accentuates Steve's shoulders, frames his chest. Bucky can't decide where he wants to put his mouth first.

Steve tugs at the hem of Bucky's shirt, and Bucky starts to put his arms out and freezes, because Steve has touched him on the couch, but he hasn't seen the full effect of the metal arm, hasn't seen the scarring around his shoulder. Bucky has worn t-shirt since coming to live with Steve, and Steve saw the metal up to the shoulder in the Asset's tactical jacket—the arm itself isn't going to be any kind of shock—but Bucky's scars are ugly, where Steve is all smooth skin over muscle.

Steve freezes too. "It's okay," he says, "we don't have to."

"Fuck, Steve. I want to." Bucky takes a breath, starts pulling his shirt up. "It's just—not pretty." He pulls his shirt the rest of the way off, and Steve throws it to the side like it offends him.

"Bullshit," Steve says, and then his big, hot hands are sliding up Bucky's sides, and he leans in to kiss him full on the mouth, and then to the side, trailing kisses down his neck, along his collarbone, over the scars at the join of his shoulder. Bucky has never been touched with gentleness there, much less with desire, and it does something to him, sends a jolt like electricity but much kinder through all of his nerve endings. "You're beautiful," Steve says.

It's too much, but also not enough. Bucky grabs the shield harness and pulls Steve to him until their chests are pressed together and the feel of this much of his skin against Steve's is overwhelming. It lights fires in his blood. They kiss, and Steve starts walking backward, dragging Bucky with him, and Bucky knows he's being steered to the bedroom, and that's fine with him.

He's not actively trying to distract Steve, but the fact is that Steve is built of muscle and Bucky wants to grope him, so he does. He runs his hands over Steve's torso, rubs his thumbs over his nipple. Notes the way Steve's back arches and the noise he makes and then drops his head so he can lick the path his thumbs just traced.

Steve moans out a _jesus_ but doesn't stop walking and before Bucky knows it, they're in the bedroom and Steve is pushing him back onto the bed where they've spent so many nights together.

He hooks his fingers through the leather of the harness and pulls Steve on top of him so they can kiss some more, and he can feel the hot line of Steve's erection against his own even through the layers of their clothes, and this is so much better than he imagined. Steve is real and warm, and skin is touching skin, and he doesn't know that he's ever felt anything this good.

"How do you want me?” Steve says against his mouth, and the thought of it catches him, awash with possibilities he has no idea how to express.

"I don't know," he says, and kisses Steve hard on the lips. "It's my first time."

"Fuck," Steve whispers, with feeling, and then Steve's big hands are cupping his face like he's precious, and some worry that he was holding on to without knowing it, that Steve doesn't want him the way he does Steve, breaks off and falls into the ocean to be carried away by waves.

He gets a good grip on the harness and flips them over, so Steve is pinned beneath him, then trails his hands down Steve's torso. It occurs to him that they are both still wearing pants, and that's a shame. He scoots back so he can get his hand around Steve's waistband, and the way Steve watches him is so hungry, Bucky feels lit up with it. His pulse is quick, blood moving inside him, and he is hot with it, the ebb and flow of life; he wants to feel that tide in Steve too.

He pulls Steve's pants and briefs down at the same time, and takes a second to look at Steve laid out beneath him. Steve's body is beautiful, of course, all long bones and dense muscle, but it is Steve's expression that makes Bucky feel like sunrise and sunset at once, like beginning and ending in the same moment. Steve's face is desperate with want, consumed with love, and at that moment, Bucky feels equal to all of it, because all he wants is to make Steve feel as loved as he feels right now, only always.

He wraps his right hand around Steve's erect cock. The skin is soft, and hotter even than the rest of him. Steve arches up; Bucky places his metal had over his hipbone, careful, and Steve groans at the pressure.

Bucky moves his hands, pressing Steve down with one, and stroking softly with the other. Steve's cock is hot, the blood there pulsing against Bucky's fingers, but his face is flushed too. Bucky slides closer until he can drop kisses on Steve's cheek and feel the heat of his skin at the same time he closes his fingers around the head of Steve's cock.

"Ungh," Steve says, and tries to bridge up with his hips.

Bucky gives in to impulse and slides down Steve’s torso to take Steve's cock into his mouth, licking and sucking at the smooth skin, tasting the salt of him, feeling the thrum of his blood all along his tongue.

Steve gasps and out of the corner of his eyes, Bucky can see his hands twists in the sheets. Something deep inside of him hums, satisfied with the way Steve is melting for him, coming apart under his touch.

"Wait," Steve groans, and Bucky pulls back, not sure what he did wrong, but Steve only tugs at him gently, moving him up along the length of his body, and presses his hand over Bucky's dick through the fabric of his jeans. It's so good, and it’s not enough, and Bucky makes a noise deep in his throat. 

"Yes," Steve gasps against his mouth, and then his hands are at Bucky's waist, unbuttoning his fly. Bucky arches up so Steve can slide his jeans down over his hips and can't help moaning as Steve gets his dick free.

Steve straddles him, bracketing Bucky's legs with his own, his muscular thighs holding him down. Steve reaches between them and strokes a finger down Bucky's cock, a light touch, but Bucky has to grip at Steve's legs; otherwise he might bow up, might dissolve into atoms. Steve touching him is so different from him touching himself. It felt good when he touched himself, but Steve’s touch is electric down his nerve endings.

Bucky reaches for Steve's cock, drags his thumb through the pre-come at the head of Steve's dick.  Steve chokes out a sound that lights up every synapse in Bucky's brain and he runs his metal arm up Steve's chest, over his nipple, mapping out his body as he learns it for the first time, relearns it. 

Steve slides up him a little, still straddling his thighs, angles his hips until their cocks are pressed together. Bucky can't help gasping, and it turns into a loud _uhn_ as Steve wraps a giant hand around them both and slowly strokes up. The sensation is so much—where the sensitive skin of his dick presses against Steve's, where Steve's fingers are warm and inexorable around them.

Steve twists his hand around the heads of both of their cocks, and on the downstroke his fingers are slick with pre-come, and both of them tense, Steve's thigh muscles clamping around Bucky, the clench of his own abdominal muscles driving him up off the bed. Steve tightens his grip and moves faster, and Bucky curls both of his hands around the shield harness again, not pulling, just knowing that he could; Steve looks down at him with wide blue eyes, pupils huge and black, and Bucky throws his head back as Steve keeps stroking them both. He can feel his orgasm building, the pleasure of it inevitable, and Steve's hand keeps moving almost too rough, and Bucky arches up and comes over his own stomach, and a second later, while he's still in the aftershocks, Steve comes too, and Bucky is a fucking mess but he doesn't care.

Steve doesn't seem to either; he collapses on top of Bucky and kisses him, and it feels sweeter now, less desperate but just as wonderful, until Bucky hears a hitch in Steve's breath and pulls back just far enough to see him trying not to cry.

"Steve?" His gut has gone cold, and the tentative thought about possibly another round withers away.

Steve looks at him, and the light catches tears caught in his long lashes. "No—it's just—" He sucks in a breath. "I was afraid I'd never get to touch you like that again. And that would have been fine! I'm just happy."

Bucky carefully wipes away the moisture beneath Steve's eyes with his right thumb, first one, then the other, and then leans in to kiss him. Then he takes a breath and tells himself to be brave.

"I remember a lot of things, more all the time. But I might not ever remember everything. I might not remember most things."

"I don't care," Steve says, then immediately contradicts himself. "Of course, I care. Just—whatever you remember. Or don't. I want to be with you."

It feels like a fog parting. It feels like sunlight hitting water and making a rainbow. It feels like not knowing exactly who you are, and having someone say they'll love you anyway, no matter what.

"Do you mean it?"

Steve's arms tighten around him, and Bucky thinks of the Asset hesitating to hit Steve without knowing why, about a love buried so deep floating to the surface. "I mean it," Steve says.

Bucky rolls over, threads his fingers through the shield harness, and pins Steve to the bed.

"Good," he says, and kisses Steve again. "So do I." 

**Author's Note:**

> "what if the Asset saw Steve's chest and it was really, really familiar? hee hee" was the premise behind this fic. That and the thought of Bucky really liking the shield harness. Perhaps some feelings snuck in along the way. They often seem to. 
> 
> I have no excuse for this either. #indulgeyoself2k19


End file.
